Xbox One owners to get TV DVR recording and other features in coming months

Although Microsoft released a digital TV add-on for European Xbox One owners at the end of last year, and already offered OneGuide and other systems to feed and control Virgin Media and Sky TV services fed through the device, it has been unable to offer complete DVR functionality.

The Xbox One Digital TV Tuner does have the ability to pause and rewind live television programmes, but you can't record any to watch at a later date, even though the console has a hard drive and all the capabilities to do so. We were told at Gamescom last year that this was more than likely a rights issue than a technical one but also that the feature was high on the company's agenda.

Now a new rumour suggests that not only will we get TV recording, but it is likely to be added to the Xbox One later this year.

Sources of tech blogger Paul Thurrott have said that the Xbox One will gain DVR functionality and, specifically, live TV recording this year because the machine is being seen as the natural successor for Microsoft to a conventional media centre PC. Indeed, it is killing off the Windows Media Center software entirely.

"Due to decreased usage, Windows Media Center will not be part of Windows 10," said Microsoft's Gabe Aul.

As well as address one of the main reasons people use Media Center - live TV recording - Aul revealed that the company is also releasing something new to handle DVD playback.

"The main scenario people used WMC for was to play DVD,” Aul explained. "We’ll provide another option for DVD playback in the future."

The Xbox One will also get Windows 10 in the future, although not when it first releases for PCs. This will also allow the console to access the same thousands of apps, including entertainment portals, as other Windows devices.